


rememberingALLY

by aohatsu



Category: American Idol RPF
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Child Abuse, Child Neglect, Christianity, Grief/Mourning, High School, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-31
Updated: 2012-08-31
Packaged: 2017-11-13 06:48:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/500666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aohatsu/pseuds/aohatsu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Adam's younger sister goes missing, the school makes it a requirement for him to spend an hour with Kris Allen at the student-to-student grief counsel office everyday, but Kris has his own problems to deal with.</p>
            </blockquote>





	rememberingALLY

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be an experiment in writing from Kris' point of view. The idea initially started because I dreamed it, but it's been expanded on heavily. I was wary of writing it at first because of the plot including somewhat depressing elements, but I decided to give it a shot. Then, I saw an advertisement for **kradambigbang** and I thought, "Hey! I could stretch this out to 10,000 words!" Well, we can see how that worked out. 
> 
> _rememberingALLY_ is really only here because of **silverraven** , who acted as both my cheerleader and my editor, even though she's not into American Idol fandom at all. (I've used and abused her, the poor thing.) I cannot thank her enough for dealing with me and my worries and nagging and procrastination. She's amazing! ♥ Despite her efforts though, I know this story is still a bit odd and difficult to read. While writing it, I had moments not only where I yelled and almost gave up on it, but also where I actually cried because of the content--and maybe I'm just over-emotional, but I really am attached to it now. She's my baby, and she's not perfect, but I love her.

When Allison Lambert goes missing, the entire town seems to get caught up in _how_. Kris thinks she was probably a sweet kid. He can remember her as a kindergartner, because he was in fifth grade that year and had had to read to her once. Well, maybe. It was a long time ago, so it might not have actually been her. He thinks it was though, because he can remember her making him read _How Sally Became a Rock Star_ three times in one day. When he’d asked her why she liked it so much, she’d answered that she wanted to be one too, just like Sally, bright red piggy tails and all.

And Allison had had very bright, very red hair.

Kris can hear Mrs. Gokey talking through the cereal boxes separating the two aisles of the _Shop and Grocery_ that he’s in, and Allison is still the main point of conversation. It’s like no one had ever imagined that an eleven-year-old red-headed girl from their own town could be kidnapped, and now that it’s happened, the floodgates have opened and soaked everyone to the knees. Not that Kris had honestly ever considered the possibility. It was one thing to tell kids to not play outside after dark, and something completely different to think something might actually happen to them in a small town like the one he lives in.

The _Frosted Flakes_ box in his hand slips to tiled floor when his grip loosens. He’s been staring at the _Lucky Charms_ for the past ten minutes without realizing it. He sheepishly picks it up and glances up and down the aisle he’s in, relieved to see that nobody seems to have noticed his momentary lapse in reality but himself. He walks to the cashier and smiles because it’s Anoop, who spends ten minutes going back and forth between scanning Kris’ seven items and talking about whether bagging groceries will be able to pay for his college tuition or not. Kris nods, and says, “Yeah,” in all the right places, but really he’s just trying to pretend that he and Anoop aren’t both sneaking looks at the two cops chatting by the front doors of the store, and then looking back at one another with the same expression in their eyes.

The cops aren’t doing anything. They aren’t out looking for Allison, or chasing the kidnapper down. 

It’s been three days.

Kris wonders how much longer it’ll take before Allison shows back up on her mother’s door.

&

It takes nine days.

Kris hears the news from Danny the minute that he walks onto the school’s front yard Wednesday morning. It’s quieter than usual and Kris can’t see many smiles even as Danny pulls him over by the strap of his backpack and says, somber, “Hey, they found Allison.” 

School is canceled once everyone gets to their first hour classes. Allison Lambert, eleven years old with bright red hair and a matching bright smile, was found at the bottom of the lake just two miles away from her middle school. She’d started sixth grade three months ago. 

Kris tries not to listen to the overwhelmingly haughty chatter throughout the long hallway as he tugs open his locker and grabs his backpack. Inevitably, he overhears too many small pieces of too many conversations. Someone says her hair had been cut, and someone else says that her clothes had been ripped and thrown in with her but that she hadn’t had them on. Kris closes his eyes and tries to will the image of that little girl giggling about how she wanted to wear sparkles on her dresses and have really vivid, brilliant hair ( _“Red or blue, because Sally already has purple!”_ ) out of his mind.

One of the guidance counselors touches Kris’ shoulder and he whips around out of his locker and his thoughts, eyes wide before he realizes who exactly it is. He pushes his mathematics textbook back into the locker before slamming it shut and looking up at the taller woman now in front of him. “Hey, Mrs. DioGuardi.”

“Mr. Allen. How are you dealing with all of this?” She looks sympathetic, Kris thinks. For some reason, the idea of her being sympathetic annoys him. He just shrugs though, and moves the strap of his backpack to his other shoulder when a passing student bumps into him and jostles it.

“Well, I think a lot of students are going to have concerns.”

Kris says, “Yeah?”

“I’d like your help if you’re up for it. The school wants to implement a teen-to-teen grief counsel for a few weeks. It’s easier for kids your age to talk to one another rather than an adult.”

Kris knows what grief counsel is like. He shakes his head. “I’m fine. I don’t need to talk about it. I didn’t even know her.”

Mrs. DioGuardi smiles, and Kris pushes down the lump in his throat, because that’s not right either. “That’s why I want your help. You can be one of the teens helping others with their grief. It’s fairly simple. Just an hour after school every day, and you’ll get extra credit for it. You’re one of my best students. I think you’d help more than anyone else I can find.”

Kris wants to say no. He’s so certain about it that he starts to shake his head before she’s even finished talking, but what comes out of his mouth is, “Yeah, alright, I’ll help.”

Her smile gets bigger. She touches him on the shoulder again and tells him to meet her in her office the next day to meet the first student he’d be talking with. She heads off and Kris sees her attach herself to Danny—probably asking him for the same favor. Kris turns to his locker, pale blue and rusty and nothing like Allison at all. He lets his forehead rest against the warm metal. He has no idea why he would say yes to counseling kids on a subject he wants nothing more to do with.

&

Kris slips past his mother the next morning on his way to school. He puts his shoes on quietly near the front door so that he doesn’t wake her up where she had fallen asleep watching television the night before. Kris closes the door carefully behind him, barely flinching when it creaks. He runs down the hall, opening the door to the stairwell and jumping down each step rather than waiting for the elevator. He and his mom only live on the third floor of the apartment complex, so it isn’t that far of a run. He’s late.

He pulls his bike roughly from its hiding spot behind two overgrown bushes and jumps onto it, his backpack nearly falling off his shoulder as he does. The school is about two miles away from the complex, and when it does finally come into view ten minutes later, he can see kids still mulling around the front of the school. He lets out a heavy, relieved sigh.

Kris is barely sitting down at his desk when his mathematics teacher claps his hands together and asks for the homework they’d had an extra day to complete. Kris hands his up, smiling as Katy turns around in her seat to take it from him. She has that same smile she always does, and whispers, “Good morning!” before turning around again. Mr. Matthews jumps right into the lesson, and despite some of the quiet murmuring from the other students, Allison isn’t mentioned once.

&

Its three minutes after Kris has unhooked his bike from its spot in front of the school that he remembers he’d promised to meet Mrs. DioGuardi in her office after school that day. He curses softly and puts a foot out to turn around his bike and start back towards the building he’d already been inside of for eight hours.

The front yard is pretty quiet. All of the other students have already gotten to their clubs or if they didn’t have any, had definitely already left for home. Kris ties his bike into its spot again, runs up the stone steps and then down the hallway where he can already see four or five kids standing around outside the door of the counselor’s office, because, well, judging from the noise, they can’t fit inside.

Kris recognizes a few of them, and wonders idly how they knew Allison before squeezing through, ignoring the guys who yell at him to wait his turn. Mrs. DioGuardi has a harried look about her when she finally notices him and she lets out a relieved smile before saying, “Mr. Allen!”

“Hey,” Kris says back, but he doesn’t think she hears because a girl a few feet away is talking really loudly about a new pair of shoes she bought last week, distracting everyone within five feet of her.

“I have a special job for you—“ the counselor starts saying as she pulls him in closer. “There’s a boy who will be coming everyday for a while, and I want him to have the same counselor—do you mind?”

Kris shrugs again, looking up at her.

“Great. He’s in Mr. Seacrest’s room waiting for you—it’s a bit crowded in here. Thank you, Mr. Allen.”

Kris escapes the room more easily than it had been to get in. Danny waves from the other side of the office after a moment, barely catching Kris’ attention. He almost considers pushing through everyone to talk to him for a second, but then remembers about whoever is so torn up about Allison’s death that they’re in a separate room, waiting for him for the first meeting of many, and instead just waves back before being pushed out of the office altogether by the disparaging mass of students.

Mr. Seacrest is the freshman and sophomore English teacher, but he spends most of his time preparing for the speech class pretty much everyone takes sometime during their four years of imprisonment. It counts for your English elective and your Occupational elective, so it’s like skipping a class by enrolling. Kris took it in tenth grade and recognizes the outlines that some of the students had made because they’re still posted up on Mr. Seacrest’s hallway presentation board. When Kris pulls open the classroom door, he stares at the room’s only occupant for a second before his hand loses its grip on the metal handle and the door falls shut again. It leaves him just outside it, standing in the hallway blankly, and Adam Lambert with his headphones on, probably staring at where Kris had just been. 

Somehow, Kris is thinking Mrs. DioGuardi mistook him for someone who actually has a background in counseling, because, well, he can sit down and listen to kids rant about how they miss the bright-hair in third period while doing his homework, but actually trying to make Adam feel better about his sister being— He’s counseling _Adam_? Adam _Lambert_?

It just seems like a sick joke. His stomach twists uncomfortably. Maybe he saw wrong. Maybe it’s just somebody else with spiky, black hair and too-tight jeans. Kris opens the door again and is this time confronted with Lambert standing up, grabbing his dark purple backpack up off the ground and practically flinging it over one shoulder. He glances back up at Kris before rolling his eyes and dropping back down into the seat. “Make up your mind,” he says, “Are we talking about shit or just pretending that we did?”

“Uh,” Kris says blankly. “Talking?”

Adam gives him a suspicious look before shrugging and letting his bag fall again. “I’m here because the school thinks it’s necessary or whatever. Dumbfucks—half those kids in DioGuardi’s don’t even know who Ally _was_.”

Kris nods from where he’s still standing at the door, and Adam gives him a pointed look that makes him jump and let the door fall shut behind him. He sits down in the desk next to Adam’s and tries to smile, but doesn’t think he does a very good job judging from the half-laugh, half-snort he gets in response.

“Okay, seriously, did you volunteer for this or did DioGuardi bribe you with something?”

Kris frowned, “I volunteered, I guess. I mean, she asked first, but…” He doesn’t mention the fact that he doesn’t know why he said yes other than possibly just being an idiot himself. Which really, he must be. He thinks the last time he ever had anything to do with Adam—ever—was during freshman year and Kris couldn’t stop staring at him in the hall. (There was lots of black, and cosmetics, and other stuff, and it was embarrassing when Anoop started laughing at him, so he’d stopped, but still, that was about as much contact he’d ever had with the man.) And now he was counseling him? 

“Did you know her? Ally?” Adam asks, abruptly, turning his blue eyes up at Kris. Adam’s shoulders are relaxed, and his earphones are strung around his neck with the slightest sound coming out through them still, but Kris realizes that it’s a serious question. It isn’t like it is with the other kids. This _matters_.

“No,” Kris says, staring at his desk. “I mean—I think I read to her once. Back in elementary school. Doesn’t really count.”

“’At least your honest about it. You have no idea how many stupid fucking—they come up with stories just to make themselves feel more important. What is that shit?” 

Kris doesn’t know how to answer. Adam seems to be running off of steam, like a car that you know needs to go to a repair shop but you fill it up with water and hope it’ll make it to and from work before it just collapses. He has no idea how to help with that and is surer than ever that he’s the wrong guy for this job.

“So you read to her? What was that, like five years ago? How do you know it was her?” Adam says finally after a pause. 

Kris shrugs one shoulder, and tries to be honest. “I don’t. I just—she liked that book. The one with Sally and the guitar that granted wishes if you played the right song? Said she wanted bright piggy tails like Sally, only red. Wanted to be a rock star. But I guess it could have been any kid.”

Adam is quiet for the next ten minutes. Kris fidgets with his fingers as the sound of some musical—and Kris can recognize it, so he knows what it is, but he can’t actually remember the name of the song or the performance that it’s from—plays through Adam’s headphones, just loud enough to hear the words, but quiet enough not to understand them all. Eventually, Kris asks what musical it is.

Adam blinks at him, and then takes a minute to listen to the song before saying, “Chicago.”

“Oh,” Kris says, because, well, that doesn’t really help him at all.

Adam puts his hand on his chin. “You know, Ally liked that book.”

“Chicago?” Kris says.

Adam laughs again. “Well, she liked the musical, anyway. But no, I meant that other one. With Sally and the magic guitar.”

“Oh,” Kris says again, lost for words, _again_.

“What’s your name?” Adam asks and Kris realizes that he never gave it to the senior.

“Kris Allen.”

“Mm. I’m Adam. I’ll see you tomorrow, Kris,” Adam says, and he gets up to walk out of the room. 

Kris jumps up, grabs his bag and quickly walks after him, “Hey, Adam!”

Adam doesn’t stop walking, but Kris catches up and steps into stride with him instead. “Uh—I just—sorry. I suck at the grief counseling thing, I know.“

“Hey, whatever. Makes it easier on me. You’re not a shrink—which, trust me, is way worse than hanging out with a cute boy after school for half-an-hour.”

Face warm, Kris just says, “Oh,” again. He and Adam split ways when Kris goes to get his bike and Adam turns in the opposite direction of his apartment anyway.

&

Kris does the dishes that night, before the water abruptly stops and he’s left with four unclean bowls and soap-covered hands. He curses and does his best to clean them off with an old towel. He makes sure to clean off all of the soap before putting them away in the cabinet.

His head hits the pillow on his bed at the same moment that his Mother stumbles into the house. He can hear her slam the door shut and start yelling when the water doesn’t turn on, and he can hear the news talking about the park where Allison was found being blocked off on the television a few minutes after that, but instead of getting up, he closes his eyes and pretends he can’t hear anything at all.

&

School is quick the next day, and Kris almost waves at Adam when he sees him in the hallway after second hour, but doesn’t when he realizes that Adam isn’t paying attention anyway, his headphones so loud that Kris can hear them where he’s standing, twenty feet away. That isn’t really allowed, but none of the three teachers standing in the hallway are bothering with telling him to turn the music down, and none of the students complain. Kris watches Adam as he pulls textbooks out of his locker and walks back down the hall, not even needing to push against people to get through the crowded halls because nobody seems to be quite willing to get in his way—worried, Kris thinks, about what will come out of Adam’s mouth if he decides that right then is a good time to explode.

Kris can’t bring himself to pay attention in chemistry, and the teacher yells at him when something—he wasn’t even sure what it was—overflowed and started mixing with something else, and there were bubbles and foam and everyone else seemed to think it was kind of awesome, except Kris couldn’t even really hear what the teacher was yelling at him. He was just glad when the bell rang and he could run to his next class. But he couldn’t pay attention there either, and whatever the lecture had been about, he can’t remember anything but Danny and Michael snickering as they threw wadded up balls of paper at the back of Nathanial’s head as the final bell rings. Before he realizes it’s even time, school is over and his sneaker-clad feet are carrying him towards Mr. Seacrest’s room. 

Adam isn’t there when Kris arrives, and Mr. Seacrest is carrying a few too-many papers as he nods and slips past Kris, leaving him all alone in the classroom. He can hear the bustling outside the door, loud and chipper—like most of them have already forgotten about Allison, or at least realized that their lives aren’t any different just because a girl none of them knew suddenly isn’t in town anymore. 

Kris isn’t sure if he’s hypocritical for not being happy about the new change in attitude, since two days ago he had been wishing everyone would just stop talking about her altogether. Things are going back to normal, but there’s still something not right about it, and Kris doesn’t know what it is. He just knows that he doesn’t like this weird haze that he’s in, unhappy about everything.

Adam walks in and looks a little surprised to see Kris already sitting in the same desk that he’d been in yesterday, but he lowers his headphones for what Kris thinks was probably the first time all day outside of class. Kris smiles for some reason he isn’t quite sure of just yet, because it’s not really a good time for smiling, is it? But Adam kind of laughs at him and throws himself into the desk next to him, and they start to talk.

&

“Neal’s leaving tomorrow. He has to get back to his job in L.A. Damn, I wish I could just go with him. I’m sick of being in this goddamn town,” Adam says, and the music from some musical Kris can’t hope to guess is still playing out of the headphones around his neck, but it’s like it’s just adding to their talk rather than messing it up—like it’s putting Adam in his element and he just can’t stop talking, kind of.

“What would you do? In L.A., I mean,” Kris asks, his chin resting on his hand, held up by his elbow on the desk which is surprisingly comfortable. They’ve been talking for what seems like ten minutes. It’s actually been about three hours, and the sun is already dropping behind the mountains, less and less light coming in through the shuttered windows for Kris and Adam to see by, the school lights having shut off some time ago without either of them noticing, apparently timed.

Adam laughs again, kind of like he’s saying _Seriously?_ before he opens his mouth to actually say, “Act. In theatre. Or maybe sing, but that’ll be easier to break into after I’m a hit on the stage, right?”

Kris nods, because Adam has probably looked up the statistics tens of hundreds of times, according to their conversation so far. “Yeah, I guess. Can you act, though? Or sing? They’re not things you can just, you know, figure out. Well, probably…”

Kris thinks he might have just insulted Adam by insinuating that he can’t act, or whatever, but Adam just thrums his fingers against the desk and says, “You’ve never seen one of the school plays, huh?”

Kris blinks, surprised, and says, “Uh, no—“

He barely has an instant to grab his backpack before Adam’s wrapped his fingers around his wrist, making Kris jolt a little, pulling him out of the classroom and down towards the auditorium where Kris has actually only ever gone during the yearly Veteran’s Day assembly.

They go in through the back, and they’re abruptly covered in darkness because Adam is still fumbling for the light switch when the door slams closed behind them. Kris feels like he’s going to trip over something as he tries to help find it by running his hands along the wall and they’re both laughing by the time Adam finally finds it and switches it on with an easy flip of his finger.

Adam bends over at the waist and starts laughing hysterically when Kris chooses that moment to make a startled jump and promptly fall over the dark red drapes covering the stage, landing on his ass hard, even though the drapes kind of soften the blow. Kris winces as the dust starts to settle around him, and groans as Adam just keeps laughing. “That’s not very nice,” he grumbles, finally, and attempts to get out of the river of fabric.

His bag had hit the ground a few feet away and Adam throws his down next to it before giving Kris a hand, helping him up and out of the massive amount of heavy cloth hanging from the ceiling. “Come on, we actually keep all the promotion posters. I’m in most of them, you know. You _seriously_ haven’t come to a show? Not one? That’s so _sad_ , Kristopher Allen.”

But Kris stops halfway behind Adam, spotting a dusty looking piano pushed to the corner side of the stage, and he doesn’t even think before saying, “We have a piano?”

Adam looks back at him from over his shoulder as he’s digging through a file cabinet and he gives a _hmm_ in agreement to Kris’ question. Kris walks over to it and wipes some of the dust off the chair sitting nearby—not the chair that came with it, obviously—before sitting down and lifting the top. The keys are dusty too. He asks Adam, “How long has it been since anybody’s actually bothered playing it?”

Adam shrugs when he comes over with some posters in-hand, and says, “None of the drama kids know how to use a piano? I don’t know. I think it’s here for the band anyway. Can you play?” 

He sounds curious and Kris jumps at the question. Honestly, he’s not sure. He hasn’t practiced in years.

“I think so,” he says eanyway. H uses his shirt to wipe away some of the dust, causing a loud sound from the keys to echo through the too-large room. Adam makes that _hm_ sound again, looking kind of amused, and Kris breathes before letting his fingers touch the keys properly.

The first thing that comes to mind is Beethoven’s _Piano SoDamia no.14_ , because it’s the piece his Dad had spent hours working with him on during those last few weeks, whenever they’d had any time at home. Playing the piano had been something they’d always put off—Kris so that he could concentrate on baseball and church choir, and his Dad because if he could just have a few more hours at the office, there’d be a promotion really soon.

The positioning of his fingers comes as easily as it ever had, the sound sprinkling out imperfectly with each key being pressed down, and it fills up in the auditorium before Kris can think about what he’s really doing. It takes a minute for everything to crash, and his fingers stop moving of their own accord. The music bounces off the walls and keeps slamming against his ears even though he’s stopped playing now. He shakes his head and looks up at Adam whose face has gone from amused to—to surprise, and maybe something else that Kris isn’t sure he can identify. He thinks Adam might be impressed though, and he blushes despite the raging ache in his chest, pounding against his ribcage, because he can remember what his Dad would say every time he finished the piece without stumbling in the middle—

“Damn, Kris, you can _play_ ,” Adam says, practically just breathing the compliment, and he’s suddenly not satisfied with the posters because he just sort of throws them to the side of the stage and says, “Wait here!” before running off back to the file cabinets. Kris turns around and stretches his neck to try and see what Adam’s doing, but the black-haired boy runs back after a minute with a book—a piano instruction book?

“It has the lyrics for Wicked, but it has the piano stuff too. Can you play it? I’ll sing for you.”

Kris wants to say no, suddenly. He doesn’t want to play the piano— _hasn’t_ for too long, but looking up at Adam’s face, excited and ready, practically vibrating with the need to show Kris exactly what his vocals can do—he nods and pulls the book away from Adam, propping it up on top of the lid, and says, “Let me look it through once so I know what I’m doing.”

He has one false start, but then begins to play as well as he can, and Adam comes in after about twenty seconds, and Kris forgets that he’s playing at all.

&

Kris isn’t actually sure how he ends up walking Adam home. They’ve been talking about music for the entire walk, and Kris is kind of surprised to realize that they have a lot in common. Adam’s been hinting at wanting to hear Kris sing, and Kris has been hinting at _never, not in a million years_. When they finally stop in front of Adam’s house, Kris is surprised to see that they’re in a really nice neighborhood—and it’s nothing like what he had been expecting, thinking about what Mrs. Gokey and Mrs. Sarver tended to say about the Lambert’s. The back of his neck warms a little, and he remembers not to believe anything gossiping housewives say in-between the aisles of grocery stores.

Adam’s house has this white picket fence and really, really green grass, with a garden underneath a bay window at the front near the porch. Kris jumps when he sees someone looking out through the window, the top of their head just barely visible. Of course, whoever it is jumps back when they realize Kris saw them. 

“Adam, uh, there was—“

“Adam!” It’s a small voice, and Kris knows it’s a little boy before the door is even all the way open. The kid is running out towards them and an older woman runs after him before Adam can run forward and grab the boy under his arms, pick him up and twirl him in the middle of the front yard.

“ _Damien Lucas Lambert!_ ” the woman yells, and Kris almost wants to laugh, but can’t quite forget that yeah, this family isn’t going to be letting their children run out of the house on their own anytime soon ever again.

“But it’s Adam!” Damien yells back, clinging onto Adam for dear life before they finally stop spinning, and Adam puts Damien back on the ground, where he wobbles for a few seconds before catching his balance. 

“And Kris. Say hi,” Adam says, and Damien looks up at Kris, looking torn between saying hi and pretending he didn’t hear Adam introduce Kris at all. 

“Not ‘spose to talk to strangers,” Damien settles on, finally, and Adam pokes him.

“Kris isn’t a stranger. He’s my friend, so it’s okay. Say hi.”

Damien seems to take that as good enough, and escapes Adam’s grasp to approach Kris and say, “Hi. I’m Dami. Are you Adam’s boyfriend? He _said_ he didn’t have one, but Daddy says that all we have to do is wait long enough and—”

Kris can’t help it. He starts laughing, and he’s relieved that Adam is laughing too, although the woman now hovering behind Damien is looking a bit nervous, so he tries to stop and says, “No, just a friend. Uh, Adam, I should get going—“

Adam leaps and grabs Kris’ arm though and says, “No way! You have to stay for dinner. You haven’t met Neal yet.”

Kris isn’t entirely sure why he agrees—maybe it’s the pleading look on Adam’s face, or the curious one on Damien’s, but in the end he’s pretty sure it has more to do with the look on the woman’s face instead. She looks like she’s torn between crying and hugging him.

&

Kris hasn’t had a home cooked meal in probably a year, and the Mexican meal that Mrs. Lambert makes is maybe the best thing he’s had _ever_. He feels kind of bad at first for eating as much as he is, but then Neal fills up with thirds and says, “Thank God you eat—the last thing we need is another boyfriend of Adam’s to be anorexic. Fucking eat, bro,” and Adam’s mother—the same woman from outside, earlier—says, “Eat as much as you want, Kris, I made enough for—“

She stops kind of abruptly and its a few seconds before Adam chimes in, saying, “Ally could eat like five helpings of Mom’s quesadilla's. It was wicked, except then she’d, like, spend three hours in the bathroom puking it all up—“

“Oh, hush, you, at least she likes her Mother’s food, unlike certain ungrateful boys,” Mrs. Lambert says, eyeing both Adam and Neal disdainfully.

They end up re-filling Kris’ plate for him when he stops eating, and he doesn’t feel bad about it afterward at all. 

It’s dark by the time everyone is finished eating. They spent a long time at the table, talking about random things that Kris hasn’t talked about in a long time, like grades and music and high scores on Guitar Hero and Rock Band. Neal and Damien stand at the door to wave at Kris as Adam walks him out. Kris, however, can hear Neal tell his son, “Come on, you’re not old enough to watch this scene,” and is flushing a hot red by the time Adam’s stopped laughing again. 

“I’m sorry I sort of used and abused you back there,” Adam finally says, standing by the opening of the fence. 

Kris frowns. “Used and abused?”

“You know, made you come in and pretend to be my best friend or whatever. My mom’s been worried about how the kids are treating me or something crazy, so… I appreciate it, anyway. Thanks.”

Something kind of wedges itself in Kris’ throat and he nods, awkwardly, before turning to walk down the stone path away from the house and Adam yells once Kris is a few feet away, “Hey! Maybe we’ll do your house next time, okay?”

Kris turns around, confused and doesn’t think before saying, “But why do I need to pretend you’re my friend?”

Adam just shrugs though. After a second, he says, “I’ll see you at school.”

Kris nods again, and watches as Adam walks back into the house, and Kris waves at Damien—who is watching from the window again—before turning and starting the long jog back to the apartment complex.

&

His mother isn’t on the couch when he walks in the front door, but Kris isn’t really surprised. It’s nearly ten, so she should’ve been home by now, but she likes to take her time getting back. Kris shrugs off his backpack and settles down to do his mathematics homework, glancing back at the door every once in a while, but at around eleven, he piles his books back into his bag and goes to his room. He still has school in the morning. 

&

The after-school sessions slip into something that’s normal. School is back to the way it’s always been, with the occasional whispered word in the hall that everyone knows is about Allison, Adam, or just their family in general. Kris still goes home every night and cleans before finishing his homework, and church on Sunday still has an extra prayer at the beginning of each service for Allison, even though Kris doesn’t think Adam or his parents have ever been to church before.

They alternate between spending an hour in Seacrest’s room, hanging out in the auditorium and just going straight to Adam’s house after school. Either way, they spend at least an hour together every day.

&

“You sure you don’t want to sing instead?” Adam asks, once, while they’re in the auditorium. Kris just shrugs and starts playing something to go with _Defying Gravity_. Adam can’t resist jumping into the song, forgetting about trying to get Kris to sing. 

&

He’s gone to Adam’s house four times by the time they’ve known each other for two weeks. Adam’s admitted that his mom likes having the fourth mouth to feed, and that when he’s around, they all try harder not to cry as much, so Kris can never plead out of it—not that he’d really want to, even without Adam’s soft, black-lined eyes staring at him with that _pleasepleaseplease, Kristopher_ expression. Kris figures out pretty quick that it’s sort of impossible to say no to that.

Sometimes they do homework in Adam’s room, usually when Adam decides he’s had enough of his Mom’s, “Honey, do you want one of these cookies that are in the oven—“ because apparently, Adam can’t say _no_ to cookies, or ice cream, or pie, or whatever else his mother makes, even though he complains about getting fat after every single one that he does eat. Kris laughs and eats twice as many and makes Adam pout and cast a glare down at his stomach and maybe even complain about fast metabolism’s under his breath, even if Kris informs him that in no way, shape or form could Adam ever call himself _fat_. But they don’t hide away upstairs very often, because Adam doesn’t like the way his Mom will go quiet without anything to distract her and Adam’s father never gets home from work until at least eight, working in the city nearby instead of in town. So they usually stay in the living room, playing Rock Band until Kris nags Adam about his wrist breaking off—and Adam always starts to snort and Kris will blush even though he just does not get it _at all_ —and they’ll watch old episodes of stupid cartoons while mostly talking about musicals that Kris has never seen and bands that Adam has never heard of. (Kris brought up baseball once, and the blank look he received in return sort of ended that potential topic for _life_.)

Allison is a topic that is surprisingly simple to talk about, but Kris tends to try and not bring it up unless Adam does first—which he inevitability does at least once every time they spend any time together, but not around his parents if he can help it. 

“You probably should talk to them,” Kris murmurs quietly, lying back on Adam’s bed as Adam stares up at him from where he’s sitting against the bedroom door, his back shutting it closed so that his Mom won’t walk in with cookies or cake or freshly-squeezed lemonade—all of which Adam claims she’s done in the past. Adam has told him several horror stories about his Mom walking in on him _on purpose_ because rather than being alone with Kris, he’d been with a boyfriend. Kris really doesn’t doubt she’ll be up at anytime, checking in, even though she doesn’t have to worry about, like, the normal stuff she’d worry about. (It’s strange, actually, how comfortable Kris is being alone with Adam like this, when he knows he’s gay—and the whole town knows Adam is gay, it isn’t hard to miss, but it’s also one of those things you avoid talking about. But Adam doesn’t bother even asking Kris if he’s okay with it, which is maybe why he _is_ , because it seems like something he definitely shouldn’t have a problem with, when it’s just _there_ , easy and non-threatening and—)

Adam is quiet, but eventually says, “Yeah. It’s just hard. My mom still cries at night, you know? And I don’t think _they’ve_ even talked about it, so how do I, like, broach the topic without the house exploding or something?”

Kris stares at the ceiling, barely noticing the warm feeling of Adam’s arm propping itself up on the bed, just close enough to brush against his side, blocked by his t-shirt. “I guess—maybe it’s one of those things you have to risk.”

It’s really dark outside, and they’d had dinner a few hours ago, followed by at least ten rounds of Rock Band, because Adam never seems to get tired of singing. And actually, Kris doesn’t mind listening to him (would rather he never stop, in fact, Adam is _really good_ ), so they’d probably still be playing if Kris hadn’t collapsed onto the sofa and pulled Adam down with, whining about being too tired to go to church in the morning. Adam had sighed, turned the television off and said, “Fine, we’ll finish our homework and you can go home.” They’d gone upstairs to start on math equations Kris wasn’t sure he knew how to do, but they hadn’t gotten past opening the books anyway before Adam had mentioned not having talked to his Dad in a week. Kris had closed his eyes and fallen back on the bed, resulting in a long silence until he’d broken it again. 

_”You should probably talk to them.”_

“Yeah,” Adam says, his voice tired and quiet. Kris sits up, jostling Adam’s hand enough that the other boy lets it fall back off the mattress and into his lap. He isn’t sure what to say, but his chest feels tied up, and he finds himself asking if Adam has any photos of Allison left. Adam looks at him stupidly for a minute, before saying, “My mom has a scrapbook, hold on,” and slips out of the bedroom quietly.

Kris rocks his heels against the carpet, looking around the room while waiting for Adam. The bed takes up most of the space, covered in rumpled black sheets and a comforter, with a desk shoved into the right corner, near the door, and a short bookcase on the other side of the bed, filled with DVD’s and CD’s, clear layers of dust telling Kris exactly which albums Adam was more likely to listen to, or what movies he preferred to watch. There were lots of things tossed on the shelves that didn’t really belong there though—a hair dryer, a bottle that was probably to do with hair… standing up power, and random tubes and containers that Kris recognized from his Mother’s room at home, so, probably the tools behind all of Adam’s daily make-up. The only pictures on the walls were posters of musicals and old bands, or one of a woman not wearing anything but a snake that barely covered all the wrong places and made Kris blush to look at.

Adam came back in, rolling his eyes at the plate of sugar cookies—in shapes and everything, with colored frosting and sprinkles on some of them—in his left hand, but a skinny book was under his arm, held against his side as he blocked the door again, kicking some dirty clothes out of the way. They spent the rest of the night looking at pictures of Allison and Damien, and when Kris slapped Adam’s hands away from covering up the image of his chubby eight-year-old self whenever it showed up.

It was a month after that when Kris finally screwed everything up.

&

That day, school had started relatively normal, until Kris had had to tell Danny off about pushing Nathanial in the halls. They’d argued throughout history, Michael on Danny’s side and Matt on Kris’, with Anoop trying to stop the argument altogether. It ended up ending via silent treatment on either sides—or not really ending, but being postponed anyway. When Katy came up after fifth period, wearing a pretty yellow dress with matching flip-flops and a plastic sunflower in her hair, Kris hadn’t been a good mood. When she asked, “Kris, um, do you want to go see that movie after school? That Disney-Pixar one, with the—“ Kris had given her a look, and she just stopped asking.

Meeting up with Adam was like opening a window after being stuffed into a twenty-person capacity room with nineteen other people, and even that started off with Adam saying, “Jesus, what are you pissed about?” when Kris falls into Seacrest’s room ten minutes late.

“Just—not a good day. Let’s go to your house? I could do with playing Rock Band, you know?”

Adam grins and jumps up, bag in-hand. “Awesome. I practiced the guitar a little yesterday. I think I can beat you now.”

Kris snorts and laughs the entire walk to Adam’s house, and finally doesn’t feel like he’s not who he’s supposed to be, at least for a little while.

“You know pretty much the worst thing that’s ever happened to me,” Adam muses later, after they’ve eaten dinner and gone upstairs, looking up at Kris with one eyebrow quirked. 

They were in his room, more often than not where Adam liked to hide when his Dad was home and Kris was over. He’d said, before, to Kris, _”I don’t want to share my cute guidance counselor, Kris, so, up to my bed it is!”_ and when Mr. Lambert had lifted an eyebrow up questionably from the other side of the room, Kris responded by yelping and saying, _”No—we’re not doing anything with the bed! Adam!”_ and Adam dragged Kris up the stairs anyway. In reality, Kris thought Adam just wasn’t sure how to act around his father anymore.

“It’s not—I was at practice, and she’d walked home hundreds of times on her own. But I still—“ Adam would say, sometimes, when a passing remark in the halls had gotten to him, or when someone tried to be self-important and explain that _it wasn’t Adam’s fault_ while he was trying to just buy some of that non-fat milk he liked at the grocery store.

Kris would just nod, slowly, and say, “Nobody knew,” and if Adam leaned over, laying his head on Kris’ shoulder for however long he needed to, it was okay. Kris never told him to move, even when it got uncomfortable after a few minutes and Adam stayed in position for an hour.

It was after that happened, again, that Adam knocks his head against the bed frame (he’s sitting on the floor again, and Kris is lying on the bed, feet hanging off next to Adam casually) and looks at the ceiling thoughtfully, before mentioning that Kris knows more about him than he knows about Kris.

“Well, equal treatment. Why are you so good at this counseling thing? I mean—what’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to you, Kris?”

Kris’ thinks, _Dad—_ but can’t swallow past the lump in his throat to say the short word to Adam, let alone explain what it means. Instead, he shakes his head, and gets past the trembling in his voice to say, steady and calm, “I’ve never had a little sister found at the bottom of a river, Adam.”

He squeezes his eyes shut the second he lets the words come out of his mouth, and the dead silence that undoubtedly counts as Adam’s retort seems to echo against his ears until he can hear Adam slowly push himself off of the floor and say, quietly, while opening his door. Kris didn’t mean to say that—he—he meant that his life isn’t as sad as Adam’s—that nothing that bad has ever happened to him—

“Maybe you should go home.” 

Kris gets off Adam’s bed and shoves his book into his backpack, hardly daring to look at Adam as he’s escorted down the stairs and out of the house. The blatant disappointment in Adam’s voice keeps ringing in his ears, and he can’t tell if he’s making it worse or better by reliving it again and again and again, and it’s only been thirty seconds since it happened. He doesn’t turn around as Adam closes the door, and neither of them says good-bye before its shut and the light turns off in the living room. Kris forces his feet to move forward and out, past the stone porch and the dark, pretty garden and the still-white picket fence, and the green, green grass that looks black everywhere but where the street lamp is casting light against it.

Halfway home, he sits on the sidewalk, on the corner where if you turn, it’ll lead you right to the park where Allison—

He puts his head in his hands, and breathes. 

How could he have said that? Adam’s voice had been so _tired_ and _defeated_ and—Kris feels like if he could hit himself, he would. He’s Adam’s counselor, or whatever, but in the past month, they’ve kind of become friends too, and he hadn’t even realized how delicate that friendship really was, yet in the space of fourteen words, he’s completely torn it to pieces and _why did he do that?_

Kris can’t come up with an answer.

&

The front door to the apartment isn’t locked when Kris gets home, and he spares a second to frown but when he opens it, he pauses in the entrance and stares at the couch. His Mom is sitting there, an open pizza box with two pieces missing on table in front of her, and she looks up at him, sad and angry all at once, and Kris feels something in his stomach wrench.

“Mom,” he starts, but she shakes her head and brings the brown bottle in her hand up to her mouth and drinks until it’s empty before finally asking, “Why are you home so late?”

Kris winces, says, “Yeah, I’m sorry, I was at a—friend’s.”

His mother is crying, suddenly, saying, “Why? Am I not—am I not good enough now, Kris? You can’t stand to come _home for dinner_?” and she’s—she’s—

Kris takes a step towards her and moves to close the door behind him. He doesn’t like it when she cries, and she’s just so _sad_ all the time, but it’s as if a truck’s horn is sounding right in his ear when the bottle that had been in her hand a moment ago smashes against the wall next to him, pieces of glass flying across the room, and Kris’ cheek stings as if it’s been slapped. She screams, this time and Kris winces again, because he knows she’s not even talking to him anymore.

Kris edges past her and slips into his room and sits down on his bed, waiting for her sobbing to stop. She’ll be alright in a minute, and everything will be fine. When he finally gets up, it’s because he can hear the faint knock at his door, and when he opens it, she wraps her arms around him and clings.

&

Kris goes to church after his Mom finally falls asleep, curled up on Kris’ twin bed with the old Disney sheets pulled up around her shoulders. It’s around four in the morning and only the barest amount of sunlight is gifting out into the streets but by the time Mr. Fuller, the preacher, walks up to him where Kris is sitting on the steps in front of the large, mahogany entrance doors, the sun is out, almost too bright. Its sending warmth down the back of Kris’ neck, and it seems unfair somehow, for him to be so warm.

“Kris?” Mr. Fuller asks, squinting down at him with keys in one hand and a box of children’s coloring books and crayons in the other. “Your cheek is bleeding. Are you alright?”

Kris looks up at him, and wipes his cheek so that the dried blood flakes off onto his wrist. “It’s just a scratch. Can carry the box for you?”

Mr. Fuller doesn’t argue and lets Kris have the box as he opens the doors, leading Kris in to the nursery section of the church to drop the new materials off. A digital clock tells Kris that he’d been sitting on the front steps for three hours, and as Mr. Fuller moves a few things around the desk in the nursery’s connecting office, Kris tells him exactly that, almost breaking off into a laugh as he does.

Mr. Fuller draws his eyebrows together and sits down on one of the small plastic children’s chairs, gesturing for Kris to do the same. Kris chooses the funny yellow one, because it’s the one he and Katy used to fight over when they were young enough to be dropped off in the nursery during Sunday service hours. It was a long time ago.

“Are you alright, Kris?” Mr. Fuller finally asks after a few minutes of silence, and Kris starts to nod before stopping.

“I—not really. It—have you ever said something really mean to someone, and weren’t sure how to fix it?”

Mr. Fuller doesn’t answer right away, but he nods, and after a moment leans down, putting his elbows on his knees and says, “It’s one of the easiest things to do. And it’s never easy to fix.”

“What do I do?” Kris asks, his voice cracking as he leans down in the too-small chair, mimicking Mr. Fuller’s own movement, but looking down instead of at the person across from him. He stares at the gray carpet between his sneakers—and he’s just now noticed that they’re dirty, covered in mud and bits of grass.

“This is going to be hard, Kris. It’s not something simple; it takes effort.” He pauses. “You need to apologize.”

Kris shakes his head, a bit desperate as he says, “Saying sorry is _not_ going to help, Mr. Fuller, I—“

“I didn’t say that you needed to ‘say sorry’, Kris,” Mr. Fuller said, his voice hard. “I said you need to apologize. An apology isn’t a word. It’s an emotion, and it isn’t easy to give.”

Kris almost asks for more—for clarification, because he’s pretty sure that the dictionary does not describe an apology as an emotion, but Katy sticks her head in the nursery just then, her two little sisters running through the now open door to grab at the dollhouse in the corner, twin expressions of _mine_ on their faces, and Katy just _smiles_ when she sees Kris. 

Kris says thank you and gets up, Mr. Fuller following suit. 

“Hey, Katy,” Kris says, as she starts putting up the child’s gate in the door.

“Hey. You remember that we’re doing hide-and-seek after service today, right?” Katy asks, and she grabs his arm, fingers curling into his skin gently, “and then, if you’re feeling better, we could still go to that movie?” Kris is about to say yes before he thinks about Adam, and instead shakes his head and pulls away from her.

“Sorry—I can’t do it. I have to—talk to someone.”

Katy puts out her lower lip in a pout, but says okay, in a small disappointed voice. All Kris can think is that it’s _nothing_ compared to the way Adam’s eyes just _fell_ the night before; how his voice was resigned, sad and yet not surprised at all. It makes Kris’ stomach curdle like old milk to remember it, and remember why Adam sounded like that.

&

It’s almost seven in the morning when Kris gets to Adam’s house. Even though Adam’s family doesn’t attend church, they live close enough that he was able to run the entire way to, until he’s stumbling up onto Adam’s front steps, breathing harshly and raising his hand up to push the doorbell.

The light in the living room is still off, but Kris knocks when there’s no immediate response to the doorbell itself. He can’t stop fidgeting as he waits, pulling his hands in and out of his jean pockets, again and again. He realizes right as the door opens that he’s wearing the exact same outfit as when he left the night before.

Mr. Lambert seems to notice, despite the bleary expression that says, _Yes, you just woke me up, and yes, I had been having a good dream while under warm covers, what the hell do you want?_ Instead, the man just says, “Kris?” 

Mrs. Lambert is behind him, yawning while in her long, white sleeping gown. After she hears her husband, she smiles and says, “Oh, were you and Adam supposed to meet this morning, dear?”

Kris doesn’t even have time to answer, or explain, _anything_ , before Adam is walking down the stairs in a baggy gray t-shirt and blue sweatpants that Kris would have sworn before that that Adam would never have been caught dead anywhere _near_. But he isn’t wearing his make-up yet either and his hair is tussled and messy from moving around in his sleep, and his freckles are bright and standing out against the sudden light that his mom has just now turned on. Kris can’t tear his eyes away even as Adam’s expression changes from sleepy to confused to actually _annoyed_ when he catches on to the fact that not only is it Kris at the front door, but that Kris is probably the reason he was abruptly awoken by the doorbell and subsequent knocking.

“Kris,” he starts, and Adam’s dad tenses at the tone that Adam uses, like he’s heard it before and is getting ready to slam the door in Kris’ face. But Kris moves into the house before he can, pushing against Adam’s dad in order to get by, and Mrs. Lambert looks a bit wary as he does. Adam is about to keep talking, to tell him to get out or something worse even though Kris has no idea what could possibly be worse.

“My dad,” Kris says, and whatever Adam was about to say changes into, “—what?”

Kris breathes, and looks up and into Adam’s eyes, bright blue and utterly confused, 

“My dad died the year before last. It—he had cancer. He'd had since before I was even born, Adam, but it never—we barely found out about it before—“ Kris shakes his head, breathes. “When he got sick—he—we’d stay home and he’d practice piano with me. Last year, he taught me Beethoven’s fourteenth, you know, that piece I first played you? It wasn’t supposed to be the last thing he taught me, but he ended up not coming home from the hospital, that time.” 

Kris doesn’t realize that he’d started crying until the salty water drips into his mouth, and he reaches up with his hands to wipe the wetness off his face. “I know that’s not an excuse for saying what I said last night, but you caught me off guard, and you made it sound like I’d had some great story to tell when it’s just, it’s _not_ like what happened to you—and to Allison—“

Adam still hadn’t moved away from the stairs, but right before Kris can get out the last words he knows, the _I’m sorry_ , Adam is _right there_. He’s still warm from being in bed, and he’s hugging Kris like the world is ending. He’s a lot taller than Kris and so Kris’ face is being kind of shoved into his shoulder, but Kris can’t give in enough to care, just reaches up and wraps his arms around Adam’s neck and hugs back, rising up onto his toes, needing this and wanting it and everything—everything is somehow better for it, even if he feels like he doesn’t deserve it.

When Adam finally lets Kris go—or rather, the second time he tries, because when he first began to retreat, Kris just gripped him tighter and held on and couldn’t quite let go—both of his parents have left the room. Kris wipes his face using his sleeve, and grimaces when he realizes how bad he is, cheeks stained with water and suspicious liquid huddling under his nose, and everything is fuzzy and loud and he can’t stop sniffling. 

Finally, he looks back up at Adam and says, “I’m sorry.”

Adam is staring down at him, and he looks—like he isn’t sure if he’s on solid ground or not. Neither of them speak again for a few minutes, until Adam brings a hand up, slowly, and touches the side of Kris’ face, making the cut there sting. “You’re bleeding.”

Kris shakes his head, “It’s dried. I just—haven’t cleaned it.” He starts to laugh, and it’s almost hysterical, like his Mom just a few hours ago, and he bends over at the waist before finally stopping, Adam’s hand resting on his back, warm where it’s touching him through his shirt.

Adam quirks his eyebrow up and taps Kris on the forehead before saying, “It’s alright. Want breakfast? My mom has Neosporin, somewhere.”

And Kris finds himself agreeing, because leaving Adam right now is undoubtedly the worst idea he could ever come up with.

&

On Monday, Kris sees Adam after second hour again. He’s all geared up to pointedly not wave—because despite Adam becoming maybe his best friend in the month that they’ve known each other, they still don’t see each other at school very often, and when they do, Adam is usually too busy ignoring everyone to notice Kris is one of the people nearby—except then Adam seems to see him and does the opposite. His earphones fall around his neck again, and he walks over with a grin on his face and touches Kris’ shoulder easily, making Katy and Danny stare from where they’d been talking to Kris a moment ago.

“Hey, Kris. See you after school?” Adam says, and then he waits, as if he’s expecting an actual response from such a rhetorical question.

“Uh, yeah, of course,” Kris says, staring at Adam kind of dumbly, because—well, talking to Adam while people are staring is kind of awkward? Adam gives him a look before glancing at Katy and Danny, looking at them carefully before looking back at Kris.

“Cool. Later,” he says, finally, and tucks his earphones back up, black hair falling loosely over his fingers as he turns and walks back the way he came. Kris watches his back until Danny pulls him into their classroom, Katy just behind them.

Danny is incredibly serious when he pushes Kris into a desk and then says, hushed and darting his eyes across the room towards the other kids who have already arrived, “Are you—you know?”

“What?” Kris says, kind of distracted by Katy, who is covering her mouth now, eyes wide and getting wider.

“You know—“ Danny tries saying again, waving his hand awkwardly, before Katy taps him on the shoulder and stops him. 

Kris stares at her for a minute, and she sighs heavily at him and fidgets until she finally spells it out for him. “Are you dating him? Adam, I mean? You’re dating Adam.”

Kris’ eyes widen and he jerks forward, sputtering out, “ _What?_ ” even as Danny starts talking to him about sins and God and how Mr. Fuller is going to be so upset, and Katy has her fist clenched in her dress but she’s shaking her head and jumping in to say that Danny is way too literal, that her Uncle is gay and still Christian so it _must_ be okay, and even when Kris tries saying, “But we’re not—“ they aren’t listening to him at all.

He puts his head down on his desk and groans.

&

Kris walks into Mr. Seacrest’s room, where Adam is standing at the door, waiting for Kris so they can just leave together, and says, “My friends think we’re dating.”

Adam’s eyebrows draw together, and he says, “Okay. And you corrected them?”

Kris doesn’t mean to complain—exactly—but it comes out as a whine when he says, “I tried! They wouldn’t listen! They just kept arguing about whether God loves me or not—and God loves everyone, gay or straight or whatever, so that was pointless, but we’re not dating, so it was even more pointless.”

Adam is staring at him kind of awkwardly now, and Kris blinks, says, “What?”

Adam shakes his head. “Sorry. I guess I shouldn’t have said hi in the hall today.”

Kris grabs at Adam’s jacket as he starts turning and walking out of the classroom, “No. That was—that was awesome, Adam. You can—do that whenever. I mean, you’re probably…“ Kris finishes by trailing his sentence off slowly, suddenly shy, “Um, never mind.”

Adam touches his hand though, making him jump. “Probably what?”

Kris fumbles for something less embarrassing—or less incriminating, really, because the butterflies in his stomach aren’t doing wonders for the reddening tone creeping its way up the back of his neck, but in the end he ends up admitting what he was originally going to say, “Just, uh, my best friend.”

Adam turns his face and it takes a few awkward seconds spreading out in-between them before he finally says, quietly, “Yeah, you’re probably mine too.”

&

Playing the piano is easier now, somehow. He doesn’t freeze up throughout the entire song that he’s playing for Adam, and Adam claps loud enough when he’s done to fill the entire auditorium with the sound of it. It’s relaxing, actually. But what Kris loves most about the days they sneak into the auditorium is that he gets to listen to Adam sing, moving around the platform like it was made for him, just for him.

Sometimes, Kris can’t rip his eyes away.

&

The first time Kris has to back out of his meeting with Adam is two months later when Mrs. Abdul calls him into her office during fourth period and says, “Mr. Allen—Kris—your mother’s had an accident.”

She’d fallen down the apartment’s stairs, and it was just a twisted ankle, but she called the school and asked them to send Kris home anyway. He took the yellow note from Mrs. Abdul and walked down the hallway, stepping inside of Mr. Jackson’s chemistry classroom and saying, “Uh,” as all the students looked up at him, including Adam, from near the back, who lifted an eyebrow as if to ask him, _What are you doing?_

“I need Adam. For a minute,” Kris says, the entire class’ still looking up at him.

“Do you have a note?” Mr. Jackson asks, looking annoyed by interruption. 

“Uh, not for this, no,” Kris says, sheepishly.

“Well, then Mr. Lambert has an exam to fin—“

Kris interrupts, “Okay, sorry, I just wanted him to know I won’t be here after school today—“

“I’m sure he’ll manage without you,” Mr. Jackson says dryly, and gestures towards the door as Adam waves from the back of the classroom, and everyone else is just sort of laughing silently, and Kris can feel his ears burning as Mr. Jackson finally pushes him out of the lab. 

Just before the door closes, he hears a girl call out, “Adam, he’s so _cute_!” and wants to maybe run and find a place to hide before he can figure out what Adam says in response to _that_. He’s pretty sure it’s going to be something annoyingly cheery like, “Yeah, I _know_!” and even more rumors are going crop up and Danny will give him _another_ cheesy talk about attending an extra church sermon on Wednesday nights while they’re supposed to be writing history assignments on people who died thousands of years before Christianity even began.

It takes him fifteen minutes to get home, and when he walks through the front door, his Mom is asleep on the couch, her ankle propped up on an old pillow and the television running low on a re-run of _The Simpsons_. It’s another half-hour to clean up the living room around her, throwing out an old pizza box and recycling a few bottles. He’s about to pull out his math textbook and start working on his homework when there’s a loud knock at the apartment door. Kris winces when he hears his mother turn in her sleep. She calls out his name, “Kris, the door! If it’s the landlord…”

“I’ll get it, go back to sleep,” he murmurs as he walks past her, and she ignores him, sitting up blearily and reaching for the aspirin he’d laid out on the end table in front of the couch, along with the glass of water. She says, “Did you throw out my corona—“ as he opens the door, and then, “Fuck, Kris, why did you—“ just in time for Kris to slam the door shut again.

He’s reasonably sure Adam Lambert does not know where he lives.

Except for the part where he obviously does.

The knock comes again, and he peels the door open, and it’s definitely Adam on the other side, tight jeans and black cowboy boots (even though Kris is reasonably sure Adam has never been on a ranch in his entire life), purple button-up and uh, lots of jewelry in weird places. It’s definitely Adam. Kris has never wanted to curse quite as much as he does right then.

“Kristopher Allen—“

“It’s a friend from school, Mom,” Kris says absently, and then, quieter, to Adam, “Uh—why are you here?”

Adam sort of hesitantly starts with, “Well—we’ve done the counseling at my house, so I assumed we could—“

Kris’ Mother says, louder, and with an edge to it, “ _Kristopher_ ,” cutting Adam off.

Kris shuffles his feet for a second, and then opens the door wider and says, “Come in. Uh, sorry it’s a—mess.”

Adam walks in tentatively and Kris can see his eyes glance at the bare walls and old television, and for a minute he wonders if Adam is going to turn around and run away, except he shakes his head and doesn’t think about it. His mom interrupts him right then anyway, another “Kristopher!” rolling off her tongue. 

He says, “No, it’s in the fridge.”

She curses, and Kris carefully avoids looking at Adam as he takes his hand and drags him into the kitchen. He grabs another glass bottle out of the refrigerator and then goes back out to his Mother, who takes it and drinks nearly half of it one gulp, before she finally looks up at Adam and says, “Who are you?” She lets her eyes run down from Adam’s spiked, black hair, to the same-color fingernails and the silver jewelry hanging down his arm and ending at his pelvis, down to his too-tight jeans and boots.

Kris grimaces and says, “Adam, from school—we’re gonna’ do homework, okay? If you need anything, just yell for me.” He starts to pull Adam towards his bedroom.

“Adam Lambert?” his Mom asks, and adds, “The one with the sister who died, right? Didn’t know Kris knew you.”

Kris can see Adam’s back straighten as they stop, “Yeah. He’s my… student counselor.”

She just snorts and takes another drink before replying, “Can’t imagine Kristopher _counseling_ anyone,” and its Kris’ turn to adjust his stance.

He says, “ _Mom_ , look, we’re just—“

“ _What?_ Am I not good enough to meet your _friends_ , Kris?” 

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Of course it isn’t! Because you love me _so_ much, running off every day to do only God knows what until fucking who knows when in the morning with _this_ ,” she says, gesturing to Adam.

Kris shakes his head, grabs Adam’s hand and pulls him to the front door instead, muttering, “Sorry, she’s—she fell down the stairs, and she’s had a little too much, you know, she’s not usually like—“

“Kris! Why—Where—don’t leave!” she’s saying from behind them. 

Kris calls out without turning, “I’m not. Adam’s just going home,” but it doesn’t stop her from yelling, and Kris kind of sees it in Adam’s face, alarmed and grabbing at Kris’ arm, and he closes his eyes before the bottle slams against the wall, barely a foot away from where they’re both standing, liquid splattering against their shoes. 

“Jesus Christ,” Adam breathes, and then turns and yells, “What the _fuck_!?” before Kris shoves him out of the door and slams it behind them, eyes shut tight even as his Mom keeps yelling from the other side, and Kris can hear the crying starting already. For the first time in what seems like years, he says, out loud, “Not sure how many she had before I came home—I didn’t think it was that many. I wouldn’t have let you come in if—“

“What the fuck are you talking about, Kris? You’re _used_ to that?” and Adam doesn’t look shocked, or disturbed, or like he’s going to turn around and leave and never come back, because his eyes are drawn sharp, and his grip on Kris’ shoulder is tight, and he’s—he’s _angry_ , and it’s the first time Kris has ever seen him angry without that tinge of sadness or guilt or regret at the edge of it.

“It’s not that bad, usually,” Kris tries to argue, except he’s too quiet, and he knows it, and Adam just tightens his grip and pulls him away, heading for the stairs. 

“No, Adam, where are you—“

“My house, dumbass,” Adam says shortly.

“I can’t—she’s _crying_ , Adam, no!” Kris is trying to pull back, digging his heels into the wood floor of the hallway, “Her ankle—Adam, I have to get her— _Adam_ , stop, fucking stop!”

“You’re such a fucking idiot!” Adam yells, finally stopping and turning around, yelling into Kris’ face. “This whole time you just let me whine about my problems—about not talking to my Dad as much as I used to; my Mom walking in on me every fifteen minutes—fucking tiny things that don’t even matter when you come home to _this_? _Kris_ —“

“What do you mean, come home to ‘this’? ‘This’ is my mother, Adam; she’s not a thing,” Kris says, almost yelling back. “It’s not a big deal, she’s just in a bad mood—“

“She threw a damn beer bottle at you, Kris!”

“She was scared I was going to leave! I can’t do just that when she’s so—“

“ _Kris_ ,” Adam says, and he grabs Kris’ hand and pulls it up to him, and he looks—kind of desperate now. “Don’t.”

“Don’t _what_?”

“Ignore everything!” Adam yells, “You would _never_ let me go back in there right now! If that were my apartment, you know you wouldn’t let me just waltz right back in. You know that. Don’t fucking lie to me, Kristopher.”

Kris opens his mouth, but he can’t stop shaking his head, and Adam tugs at him again, and says, no longer yelling, “Please—just come home with me. You’re mom will be fine. She’ll be fine.”

He’s quiet for a long time, and they just stand there, Adam gripping Kris’ hand in his own, even as Miss Giraud comes in from the stairs and looks at them the entire time that she makes her way into her own apartment. Kris breathes shakily, and says, “Okay.”

Adam leans forward and touches his forehead against Kris’, breathing out, “Thank you.”

“But I have to go to my church first,” Kris adds, and ignores Adam’s hesitant look as he drags him down the stairs, trying to ignore the loud sobbing he’s half-certain he’s imagining.

&

“Mr. Fuller,” Kris says as he walks into his preacher’s office, Adam right behind him, looking as uncomfortable as possible. Adam pulls back when they enter the room, trying to loosen his hand from Kris’ grip, but even as Mr. Fuller looks up from his big mahogany desk, Kris tightens his and refuses to let go, tugging Adam closer and fully into the room. He doesn’t think he can do this without Adam.

Mr. Fuller’s eyes go from Kris’ face to his and Adam’s interlocked hands, and then up to Adam’s face. He’s frowning, but Kris ignores the implication and says, “My mom—can you go check on her when you get done here for the day?”

Mr. Fuller nods. “Of course, Kris. Is there something wrong?”

Kris wants to say no, that she just fell down the stairs, but really, Mr. Fuller is going to _see_ her. But he can’t speak up; can’t say it out loud. Adam squeezes his hand though, and speaks up for him. “She’s a bit out of sorts.” 

He looks at Kris, and when Kris doesn’t look back, he quietly adds, “She had too much to drink. Kris isn’t going back home tonight.”

Mr. Fuller doesn’t speak up for a full minute, not until Adam pulls Kris in closer to him, and puts an arm around his shoulder, making Kris look up at him half-confused and half-thankful. When the older man does speak, he sounds sad, and a bit weary, “I’ll look in on her.”

“Thanks,” Kris mumbles, and moves to turn around.

“Kris?” Mr. Fuller says, suddenly, “You’re—this was a good decision. Mr. Lambert, thank you being with him now.”

Kris nods, and Adam looks a bit surprised, but Mr. Fuller smiles and then adds, “Oh, Kris, Danny won’t be here on Sunday. He’s going on a trip out of town, I believe. Are you interested in singing for us again?”

It’s not the first time Kris has been asked, and it’s not the first time he shakes his head no, but it is the first time that Mr. Fuller adds, “Kristopher. You can’t make anyone else happy by not allowing yourself to be. Sing on Sunday.”

Kris just shakes his head though. He says, “I can’t. But thanks,” and pulls Adam out of the church.

&

Kris excuses himself to the bathroom the moment they get to Adam’s house, and stays there, sitting on the edge of the tub, for nearly half-an-hour, just staring at the tiled floor and breathing unevenly. When he finally comes out, he haphazardly smiles at Adam and rolls his shoulders in a _sorry I took so long_ kind of movement. Adam shrugs, and pushes him up the stairs.

He thinks Adam probably explained just enough to his mother to get her sympathy and not her anger, because she makes them twice as many cookies and doesn’t come in to bother them nearly as much as usual. Kris almost forgets why he’s staying the night at Adam’s house until after dinner, and Adam says, “Do you want to sing this time?” throwing the microphone from the _Rock Band_ set towards Kris.

“No,” Kris says, and throws it back. Adam glares at him, and Kris falls back onto the sofa and blinks lazily, grinning. “Haven’t sung in _years_ , Adam. I’d suck. You know this. I have explained this.”

“The game won’t care if you suck, come on.”

“Nope.”

“Pretty please?”

“Not a chance.”

“Why not?” Adam finally asks, grumbling, before sitting on top of Kris’ legs, making Kris let out an, “Umf!” Adam, while not _fat_ , is still _heavy_.

“I’ll move when you sing,” Adam says, holding the microphone out again, and Kris glares, before sighing and saying, “I can’t. I’m really no good.”

“I don’t care if you’re not a good singer, Kris, I just think you should try,” Adam says, swinging the microphone a little, still holding it out.

“It’s not—it’s not that I’m bad. I’m kind of good, or well, enough to do church choir anyway. It’s just—I don’t like it.”

“You… don’t like singing. Okay, whatever, I’ve seen you get all glossy-eyed when _I_ sing, so that is such a big, fat load of shit, Allen.”

“That’s so different it shouldn’t even be in the same conversation!” Kris says, starting to laugh as he tries tugging his feet out from underneath Adam, who jumps and grabs him even as Kris escapes the couch and lands on floor with a thud. Adam’s hands find Kris’ sides easily, pushing his shirt up so that they can tickle his skin directly, and Kris can’t stop laughing even while he struggles to get free again. They end up being loud enough for Mrs. Lambert to walk into the room with her eyebrows up. 

“Okay, okay, I give! I give!” Kris yells, almost out of breath, and Adam grins down at him from where he’s sitting on his stomach, making it incredibly difficult to breathe. 

“God, you’re so heavy, get off,” Kris says, pushing at Adam’s chest, resulting in the older boy rolling off awkwardly and spreading out flat on the floor, shirt rumpled and hair miraculously still perfect, while Kris’ was probably an affront to hair products everywhere.

“I sometimes regret the fact that you’re straight, Allen,” Adam says suddenly, after they’ve both laid down to catch their breath. Kris goes still, but Adam starts chuckling and reaches up and over Kris to pull down the plate of chocolate-chip cookies, pulling one apart and putting it in his mouth. He adds, belatedly, “I hate these things.”

Kris thinks Adam’s ability to make something like _I sometimes regret the fact that you’re straight, Allen_ into a regular, easygoing, no-spill conversational piece is some sort of super power, because neither of them mention it again, or even have any weird moments where they’re obviously thinking about it. It just—doesn’t even matter. 

Not for the first time, Kris wonders why people like Danny and Michael find people like Adam to be threatening.

Eventually, Mrs. Lambert says, “Okay, boys, I’m going to bed—you should too.” Of course they don’t for another three hours. (They’re teenage boys with an excuse to have a sleepover; why on Earth would they waste time sleeping when they could be kicking ass at video games?) Finally at two thirty-seven in the morning, they trudge up the stairs to Adam’s bedroom. Kris, before thinking about it, yawns and starts unzipping his jeans, shoving them off until he’s in just his t-shirt and boxers. When he looks up, Adam is turned away from him, still fully dressed (except for the boots that he’d kicked off ages ago). 

“Adam?” Kris says, yawning again.

“You—do you want me to sleep on the floor, or the couch downstairs—“ Adam says, breaking off.

Kris shrugs. “You’re bed is big enough to share, isn’t it?” He pulls back the comforter to get in and demonstrate. But if there’s one thing Kris really is good at, its sleep, and he barely manages to sleepily mumble, “See?” before his head hits the pillow and he’s out.

&

In the same way that Kris can fall asleep in seconds, he can wake up without any random bits of sleep still attached to him—he doesn’t need to blink or yawn or cover his eyes. So when he wakes up, he immediately notices that the room is completely encased in darkness. Adam has these really dark red curtains that cover the window completely, and the alarm clock is typically Adam’s mother, so there’s no blinking red numbers hidden somewhere in the room. Thus, there is no light to speak of. It’s pitch dark and Kris is blinking up into it, thinking of a way to get up without waking the solid, warm mass next to him, but also remembering the way the bed will creak when you sit up on it, and the small mountains of clothes on the floor just waiting to trip him because he can’t quite see where they are.

He ends up just turning over onto his back, only making a face once, when Adam shuffles but thankfully doesn’t wake up. He thinks about his mother for a minute, letting out a long sigh and inwardly cursing Adam for even coming over in the first place. His apartment—it wasn’t horrible, or anything. The water turned off sometimes, and the wallpaper peeled a little, and you could kind of hear _everything_ through the walls because they really were too thin, but. Kris has his own room, and his own bed, and when his Mom is feeling okay, they’ll sit and watch TV and eat pizza and—it’s not like he’s abused or anything. His mother has never hurt him. It’s—she’s just sad, _all the time_ —

It—it’s really okay, most of the time. It is. It _is_ —

He has to blink a few times to stop the burning sensation at the corners of his eyes, and then he turns again, reaching out for Adam. He puts his arm around Adam’s waist; his elbow bending so that his hand stops at a rest atop the few inches of mattress left over on Adam’s other side. He pushes close enough that his chest is pressed against Adam’s back, so that he can feel Adam’s breathing—the steady _up, down, up, down_ of his chest—through the soft sweater material he’s wearing, and the hairs on the back of Adam’s neck tickle against Kris’ cheek and nose. 

He goes back to sleep.

&

This time, when Kris wakes up, it’s because Mrs. Lambert opens the door to Adam’s room and a stream of light kind of explodes in their faces. Kris winces and sits up, whereas Adam curses abhorrently and tries to use his comforter as a shield by pulling it up and over his head, only the top tips of his hair remaining visible. Mrs. Lambert shakes her head when Adam reaches up and pulls Kris back down and then throws the blanket over his head too. It kind of reminds Kris of playing Fort with Katy, Danny and Anoop back in elementary school, and he ends up laughing for long enough that Adam kicks him and tells him to either shut up or go join the she-devil (his mother).

Kris grins and runs a hand through his messy hair, saying, “I’ll go help her make breakfast.”

He waits, and Adam finally says, into his pillow so it’s almost impossible to understand, “If you think that’ll guilt me into getting up, you’re wrong.”

Kris laughs again, but pads barefoot out of the bedroom, leaving Adam to the last scraps of sleep he’s likely to get. He uses the bathroom quickly, before going into the kitchen to help Adam’s mom by toasting the bread (the only thing she’ll let him do, because apparently she’s had enough experience with Neal and Adam’s help that she’ll never trust a teenager over a stove ever again). Contrary to what Adam had said earlier, he does eventually come into the kitchen, still dressed in the over-large sweater he’d put on to sleep in, but with his hair looking good enough that Kris suspects he probably did something with it already. But Kris isn’t really looking at his hair, it’s—

Adam goes straight the refrigerator and pulls out the half-full jug of orange juice, and he’s not even looking at Kris. But the freckles clustering his cheekbones are standing out darkly without any make-up there to hide them, and it’s the second time Kris has seen them, so he’s not sure why he’s staring, but he is. Mrs. Lambert yells, a minute later, “Kris!” because the butter that he’d had on the knife he was holding had slid off and landed on the ground with a splat.

“Oh, sorry!” Kris said quickly, putting the knife down and making to grab a paper towel to clean the mess with, but Adam yawns and grabs one first, dropping to his knees slowly, saying, “It’s okay; I’ve got it.”

The back of Kris’ neck is warm, and he nods without saying anything, until Adam stands back up at him and gives him a sleepy half-annoyed smile (like he still doesn’t know why he’s not in his bed this early). His freckles are kind of, like, changing and crinkling up with the movement, and Kris blurts, “Bathroom!” before half-running out of the room and almost knocking a cup over (getting another, “ _Kris!_ ” out of Adam’s mother) before shutting the narrow bathroom door closed, and pressing his back up against it.

When did he— _oh._

&

Kris finally persuades Adam to stay put, and that he’ll call if anything happens, and leaves Adam’s house at noon, slowly walking home. It’s really warm, and he’s kind of wishing he was still in Adam’s house, if just because of the air conditioning. He stops walking when he reaches Clement St., and it feels like something sharp and jagged cuts at his stomach when he hears a lot of laughing coming from the park.

He takes the detour, and walks up until his sneakers hit the small rocks that signify the edge of Clement Park. Somebody, and he doesn’t even know who, has a grill out, and there’s a whole family there, eating burgers and two kids are playing with a Frisbee, and a few yards away a woman is jogging. There’s a long, yellow piece of tape blocking off the river, but it’s been battered from wind and is hanging low, like it’ll fall at any moment, and nobody will even remember that a little girl died there.

He’s angry by the time he opens his front door and it slams when he shuts it. There are empty beer bottles open and littering the couch table and floor, and the room is sweltering, the back window open but not helping to filter the hot air. This isn’t how he should do it, he thinks. He’s not really sure of anything except that he’s too pissed to be thinking straight. But he walks to his mother’s room anyway, and says, “Mom—“ loudly, before realizing that she’s not even in her room. The bed is messed up, though, and her window is open too, and her anti-depressant pills are lying out on the bedside table.

Kris stops walking, and shakes his head, something clicking away from anger and into cautious. He backs out of the room, and knocks on his own bedroom door instead, quietly, before slowly opening the door so that it doesn’t creak and wake her up. She’s lying in his bed, and his fading Lion King sheets are covering her up. A couch pillow is underneath her ankle, propping it up. Kris scans the rest of his room quickly, not coming up with any bottles or pills, just one cup half-full with warm water.

He walks to the bed and sits down on the floor next to it, his knees making a solid thump when they hit the floor. He puts a hand up to her shoulder and shakes her, saying, “Mom?” 

She blinks up at him and wipes the hair out of her face, and before he can say anything else, she says, “Oh, _Kris_ ,” and reaches up to hug him, whispering into his ear, almost crying but not quite, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, please don’t go, so sorry, don’t leave, so sorry.”

His mom refuses to go back to sleep after Kris wakes her up, instead making Kris help her stumble out into the living room, and she gives him a half-forced smile as she fumbles around on the couch, throwing bottles away in a big bag she’d asked him to hand her. Kris also gets her a glass of water, and sits down next to her. 

“Are you okay?” he asks, finally, after an uncomfortable moment of silence when she can no longer reach anything to throw away.

She nods, her brown hair falling off her shoulders, and she says, more firmly than when in the bedroom, “I’m sorry. I haven’t—I’m not the best mother. But I love you,” and she looks at him, and it almost looks like she’s scared she’ll be rejected, as if her son _doesn’t_ love her back, “and if you want to bring that boy back over—I’ll clean up, and make dinner, okay? And—“ she pauses, looking around, “he can stay over, if you want. Like when you were little, and Katy, or, or Danny, would come over to play.”

Kris hasn’t had a friend come to his house since before his father had died. They’d lived in a house, too, before that. So really, no one has been to the apartment, if you don’t count the disastrous time with Adam. But that’s really not what his mother’s offer is about, and he knows that. He nods. “That’d be awesome. Can I help?”

And she smiles and nods and Kris helps her into the kitchen, where she sits down at the table and tells him what to do.

&

Its four o’clock now and Kris still hasn’t _actually_ called Adam. He’s contemplating telling Katy to come over instead, because that just seems safer, somehow. But he picks up the phone, finally, and it rings twice before Mrs. Lambert’s voice says, “Hello?”

“Hey, Mrs. Lambert.”

“Oh, Kris, are you coming over tonight? We’re having fettuccini, and there’s enough for—“

“No, uh, I’m staying with my Mom. Is Adam there?” Kris blurts out, not wanting to hear anything else about how Adam really isn’t going to want to come over after all.

“Yes, hold on, he’s been in his room ever since you left—probably brooding and listening to show tunes on his headphones again.” Kris doesn’t laugh, but he kind of wants to, and he can hear her call out, “Adam! Kris is on the phone!” along with a knocking noise. 

It takes a minute, but Kris eventually hears Adam’s voice say, “Kris?” before it gets louder and Adam is talking properly into the receiver, “Hey, Kris. When are you coming over?”

“No,” Kris says, amused that everyone is acting like he lives there, or something. “I’m not coming.”

“Oh. Why?”

“My mom is, uh, making dinner, but hey, um, I have a favor. To ask. From you.”

“Whatever you want.”

“Will you come here? Tonight? Dinner, uncomfortable conversation with my mother, maybe a movie?”

Kris realizes it sounds like a date somewhere between ‘dinner’ and ‘movie’, but just winces silently and goes with it. It’s not like it isn’t something they’ve done before—just at Adam’s house, not his apartment.

Adam is silent for a few seconds, before saying, kind of hesitantly, “What do I wear?” and Kris laughs, his stomach uncoiling in relief. 

“You have more of a clue than me, Adam. I’d stick with jeans, and a t-shirt, but—do you even have anything that lame?”

Adam starts griping about fashion, sounding a bit affronted by something Kris had said (not that Kris knows exactly what), and Kris barely manages to escape the phone call ten minutes later, while Adam is apparently pulling on jeans that look good but are very difficult to actually get into. Or something. Kris isn’t really worried—he doesn’t think he’s ever seen Adam in anything that wasn’t a million times better than the best thing Kris has ever worn in his entire life.

It’s later, half-an-hour before six, when Kris first realizes that it isn’t going to _just_ be him, Adam and his mom, and it’s because the door bell rings, and his mother yells from the kitchen, “Kris! Get that! It’s Simon!”

Incredulously, Kris yells, “As in the _preacher_!?” and runs to the door with the vacuum in-hand. He pulls open the door, and says, kind of breathlessly, “Mr. Fuller?”

“Hello, Kris. Forget a sock?” 

Kris glances down and moves his toes—one set covered with an orange sock, and the other, uh, not. He grins sheepishly, and says, “I have a friend coming over, so I was getting dressed, but then we spilt the sugar, so I had to—“

“It’s alright,” the preacher says, chuckling, and he steps into the apartment easily.

And that’s how he figures out that Mr. Fuller really had come over the night before, and had in fact spent two hours comforting his mother, and—well, his Mom was cooking, so it must have been something, even if Kris has no idea what. (Preachers are miracle workers, Kris thinks. They train for this kind of stuff.) When Adam finally gets there, tight jeans, and a dark red t-shirt with a few too many shiny, uh, parts, that kind of doesn’t look like a t-shirt anyway, Kris has to force him inside. 

“I hate you,” Adam says, grumbling.

Dinner isn’t as awkward as you would think. Adam takes Kris’ and Mr. Fuller’s hands during prayer and Kris doesn’t close his eyes in order for Adam to feel less awkward about it. The prayer is the only time anyone mentions Allison, and the meal itself isn’t actually that bad—Kris is the one who’d made it, mostly, but his Mom had helped with the macaroni and cheese, and she’s kind of really proud of herself, and Adam compliments it, gets her talking about buying a cookbook and starting to cook more. 

It’s three hours later when Adam is glaring at him, and Kris is laughing, that all the awkwardness of the night finally seems to slip away. Kris pushes a carton of ice cream across his bed for the fourth time, and Adam glances at it, and then glares at him again and pushes it back. Just to be mean, Kris takes a really big spoonful and shoves the whole thing in his mouth. 

“You’re so gross,” Adam says when some of it dribbles down his chin because he’s laughing again. 

“It’s not really my fault you have something against ice cream, and cookies, and cake, and lasagna—“

“You just want me to get fat. I can’t believe you.”

“Yeah, that’s my big, secret plan. Not sure why, but.”

“Obviously, you want me fat so I can’t make it to stardom in L.A. after graduation.”

Kris’ laugh is hollow after that (too suddenly hit with the word _graduation_ , that he and Adam are in different grades, won’t be graduating together, won’t be—) and he jumps up to put the ice cream back in the freezer. 

He eventually helps his Mom to her bedroom, after Mr. Fuller leaves and after she tells Adam (completely sober, so Kris doesn’t even have an excuse afterward), “I have no idea why Kris likes you, but you’re nice, so just be safe when you’re—and we’ll be okay.”

Adam doesn’t help, just nods and says, “Very safe, madam, I promise,” while Kris glares at him and kicks him out of the room.

“I don’t know why everyone thinks we’re dating,” Kris says harshly, plopping down on his bed with his hands pillowing the back of his head. “It’s not like we go around holding hands or anything.”

“Actually—“

“Shut up! You’re not helping!”

&

His mom starts going to church again on Sunday mornings, and on Wednesday evenings, and this meeting for alcoholics on Thursday evenings that Mr. Fuller recommends, plus Saturday afternoons if she’s not working. Adam starts coming over to his house on Friday’s, at his Mom’s request, and sometimes stays the night. Kris hasn’t been quite so comfortable in his own apartment in what seems like years, and having Adam there somehow makes it even better, even if he makes fun of Kris’ Disney sheets and old action figures sitting in the window and on the dresser, and yells whenever Kris tries to eat something unhealthy in front of him.

They sneak back into the auditorium on Monday two weeks later, not having been able to for the past three weeks because the band was using it. It’s echoingly empty, and Adam spins on the stage in his black heeled boots while Kris tries to figure out what exactly the band had done to the old piano. (More than a few keys were out of place, like they’d tried to fix it, but had failed rather atrociously.)

Eventually he sits and starts playing something from _Cats_ , and then _Chicago_ and quickly, just to clear his head of the show tunes, a modified version of _Geek in the Pink_ , finding himself humming along with it without really noticing until Adam does.

“Kris,” Adam starts, and his voice is quiet enough that it doesn’t echo throughout the auditorium like when he was singing. “Sing.”

It’s the culmination of something, something big that he doesn’t even know what is. Kris’ fingers start to shake against the keys, and he pulls them back to shake them out and get the blood flowing, because he doesn’t want it to look like he’s scared. He’s not. He’s—he doesn’t think he remembers _how_ to sing. He shakes his head, and pushes back in the seat of the piano, and says, “Adam, I can’t. I’m _sorry_.” 

He doesn’t bother with looking at Adam—knows he’s disappointed, maybe even sorry he asked in the first place. But his stomach is in knots and he just grabs his backpack and quickly leaves the auditorium, ignoring Adam’s voice behind him, tiredly saying, “Kris,” the large metal doors slamming behind him, echoing in past Adam’s still form. 

He’s not sure why he ends up sitting on the front steps of the public library, but that’s where he is. His face is pressed down against his knees, and the hot sun is beating against the back of his neck, sweat soaking into his t-shirt’s neckline. It’s nearly summer, nearly _graduation_ , and Adam will be _gone_ , off to L.A. or wherever he’s planning on going to become famous the way that Kris knows he can, and will. 

A little girl, maybe five, with blonde hair pulled back into a bun, and little curls hanging in the front, sits down next to him with a drippy blue popsicle in her hand, and then a little boy in a green soccer shirt sits next to her, and another and another and another. It’s a field trip, Kris realizes, belatedly, and they’re all talking and chatting and dripping popsicles _everywhere_. There’s a man in a suit not too far off, and he’s yelling for them to stay in a circle until everyone is done eating, and then they can go inside to meet the fifth graders—

The kids finish eventually, and go inside. Kris slowly picks his feet up, tugs his backpack over his left shoulder and starts a slow jog back to the school. His shirt is soaked by the time he gets there, and he’s breathing harshly when he pulls at the auditorium doors.

They’re locked.

It figures, Kris thinks, wanting to yell. Instead, he just lets his back crash against the metal, and slides down until his ass hits the concrete floor, and he stares at the ceiling, head pressed back on the door. 

Maybe he’s thinking too much about this—about all of it. Singing for Adam isn’t going to make him stay, and it definitely won’t bring Allison _back_. She’s gone, and he’s leaving, and it shouldn’t matter as much as it does, it really just _shouldn’t_ , maybe even _can’t_. His eyes start to burn and he pushes a hand up to cover them, pressing tight to hold back the tears. Why is he crying, anyway? It’s not—it’s not like—

It’s not like it’ll be the end of his whole world when Adam leaves.

It’s not like Adam is what he wakes up and thinks about, everyday, or what he thinks about when he goes to sleep. It’s not like Adam is why Kris is who he is now, or why Kris can’t wait until seventh hour ends every day, or why he’s started spending more time than ever before in the bathroom in the mornings, trying to do something with his hair, or why he’s trying to figure out what color matches his eyes better, green or blue, or why his hand hurts from too much Guitar Hero practically all the time, or why his Mom is going to church again, and hasn’t bought a six-pack in weeks, or why Kris finally told Katy to go on that date with Danny, or why Danny and Michael finally stopped picking on that eighth grader with the weird clothes and the pink hair or why Kris keeps asking God _why_ in-between _thank you_ and _how could you?_ every night when he prays.

And even if it is—even if it is _all because of Adam_ , it’s not like singing is going to change _anything_.

&

Kris wakes up the next morning feeling sick, and he has just enough time to throw himself at the toilet before vomiting what feels like everything he’s eaten in the last week, only it can’t be, because he repeats the performance ten minutes later after a shower that ran cold seven minutes in. His mom knocks at the door, saying, “Kris? Maybe you should stay home today,” and Kris mumbles an affirmative through the door, lying flat on his black, trying to breathe without getting sick again.

His mom gives him some medicine and a water bottle before leaving for work, and Kris spends the morning huddling under his Disney sheets, half-sleeping and half-thinking about Adam, and how much it is going to suck when he leaves. Kris could always follow him, a year later, but—Adam wouldn’t want someone like Kris to go with him to somewhere like Los Angeles. He’d be a fish out of water, trying to survive in that world. Adam was born for it. Kris—Kris isn’t sure he’d feel comfortable looking _Broadway_ up on YouTube at the library.

Even if he was, it came back to Adam, already having been there for a year, probably a star already and not needing to be bothered by the small-town straggler who’d followed his friend to the big city.

He forces himself to get up at noon, drags himself to the kitchen, eats a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and collapses onto the couch. He falls back to sleep.

When he wakes up for the third time, there’s a pattering against the other side of the front door. Kris rolls off of the couch and forces himself over to it, pulling it open. He blinks up at Adam, who is standing there, fidgeting and cracking his knuckles, black fingernail polish chipped at the edges of his nails.

“You skipped our meeting,” Adam says, kind of quietly, but his eyes are going from Kris’ bare feet, up to his boxers and white t-shirt, until he looks at Kris’ face and asks, “or did you just not come to school at all?”

“I’m sick,” Kris tries, and even though he really was is sick, it still feels like a lie, and makes his stomach churn.

“Oh,” Adam says, awkwardly, and shuffles his feet against the carpeted hallway again. “Can I come in anyway?”

Kris nods and pulls back, and Adam walks in, big black boots making a thumping noise every time he takes a step. He looks at Kris again, and bends down to take them off, probably feeling overdressed, and the idea makes Kris feel _underdressed_ , which, considering he’s in the same thing he wore to bed the night before, he kind of is. 

“Um—I can go get dressed—or at least put on pants—“ Kris says, running back to his room to find a pair of jeans that don’t smell, and tugging them on as fast as he can before walking back out into the living room, where Adam is still standing, looking uncomfortable, now without shoes.

“So, uh,” Kris starts, and doesn’t finish.

Adam is sighing and sitting down on the saggy side of the couch, saying, “Look, I’m sorry for pressuring you into singing. I won’t do it again.”

Kris nods, and sits down next to Adam, slowly, thinking about everything he’d been quietly freaking out about for the past two months. “If you want, I—I don’t know what song, or anything, but—I’ll sing for you.”

Adam kind of looks like he’s been slapped or kissed or maybe both, and Kris drops his gaze to the floor, where his toes are curling against the cold wood. “If you want.”

“Yes,” Adam says.

Kris laughs tightly, and looks up. “I don’t know why I haven’t in so long. Teenage rebellion, you think?”

Adam smiles, “Definitely. What are—“

But Kris breaks him off, starts easy, humming to the tune of a song he’s been listening to on Anoop’s iPod during P.E. every day for the past year or so, and he gets up and goes to the closet, and throws a few jackets out, pulling a guitar case out of it. The guitar is a classical, old and dusty, and he hasn’t tuned it in a year, but he pulls the strap over his head and sits back down next to Adam with it anyway, and lets his fingers glide along the strings slowly at first, before using his thumb to start playing, trying to nick the strings with his bitten down nails. It’s a bit choppy, the way he’s playing, but Adam hasn’t said anything, and Kris forces himself to keep going, until he’s played some variation of the song all the way through. He pauses just long enough to breathe, and starts again, his voice starting the minute his playing does, breaking at first, but getting easier as he goes, “ _If you just walked away, what could I really say? Would it matter anyway?_ ” and the music gets louder here, than the first time he played it, and he misses the correct placement of his pointer finger, getting the wrong note when he presses too hard, but can’t really bring himself to care, because he can’t bring himself to look up at Adam either, “ _Then we could stay here together, and we could conquer the world. If we could say that forever, it’s more than just a word._ ”

He’s missed singing. It’s not difficult, suddenly, but rather too easy and he doesn’t know why he stopped—hadn’t realized it had mattered so much until today. He misses another note as he reaches the end of the song, and his voice is a little scratchy, but he finishes it out, “ _If you just walked away, what could I really say? Would it matter anyway? It wouldn’t change how you feel._ ” It’s a lot like playing the piano—scary, until you realize it doesn’t matter. 

Adam is good at helping with that.

He finishes the last chord with his index finger slightly harsher than he should have, and the sound rings through the otherwise silent apartment. Kris looks up at Adam, expectant, and needing some sort of response. Adam has his fingers clenched against his leg, and he’s looking at Kris as if he’s some sort of miracle. Kris thinks, oddly, that this would be a good time for the back of his neck to flush red, all the way up to his ears, but he’s frozen in his chair, and doesn’t move at all until Adam does. 

And when Adam moves, he moves forward. He pushes in, over Kris’ guitar, reaching out with an hand that grips the edge of the couch’s arm, and he’s leaning forward, and it’s—Kris jerks backwards and falls, slams his head into the couch’s arm, right next to where Adam’s hand had gripped it for purchase. He barely notices the dull thud of pain sounding at the back of his head though, his eyes wide and his mouth open, looking up at Adam, whose leaning over him, looking—just as surprised, but with something warring in his expression too, and Kris realizes it’s _embarrassment_ before Adam is pulling himself back, sitting awkwardly at his end of the couch, leaving Kris to sprawl underneath his guitar.

“Um,” Kris finally says, as he struggles to get back up and pull the guitar off.

“I’m sorry. You were really great, Kris. It was—I thought you said you weren’t good at singing? That was—amazing. You’re really talented.” Adam is staring at the floor while talking, but Kris can hear the shaking in his voice and he isn’t quite sure what he’s doing, but he spares a second to think about whether he’d brushed his teeth after lunch (and thanks God momentarily when he remembers that yes, he had) before he sits up properly, pushes Adam back from his own hunch, and leans in to kiss him. 

He stops a few centimeters away, the notion of _what am I doing?_ hitting him before Adam closes the gap between them, and they’re _kissing_. Adam’s mouth is softer than Kris had thought it would be (not that he’d really thought about it much, just), and tastes like that spearmint gum he has in his wallet, but that’s all Kris registers before Adam is pulling back with this—this _sound_ when their lips part and Kris is left there, eyes closed and leaning halfway over the couch like some kind of idiot.

“Um,” Kris says again, when he finally opens his eyes to find Adam nervously looking on from where he’s still sitting. He kind of looks like a cat not sure which way to run. Kris asks, “I thought that gum was for emergencies only?”

“What?” Adam says weakly.

“You’re—you taste like the gum in your bag.” And that sounds so odd, that Kris just lets himself fall backward, his back pressed against the couch frame, and he laughs a little, softly, adding a second later, “You said that was for emergencies only. So you’ve been cheating.”

Adam doesn’t respond for a minute, until he finally drops his shoulders and puts his face in his hands, groaning, “Oh, God.”

Kris would much rather keep laughing and pretend nothing world-changing had just happened, but he jerks himself up immediately, pulling Adam’s hands down and says, “Adam?” in a small voice.

“I just kissed you,” Adam says, looking at him, and it’s like he’s fighting to stay composed, or something. Kris can think of a million things to say to get his point across. (Things like, “That’s perfectly okay!” and “I kind of I started it!”) But what he does is kiss him again, and he holds Adam’s hands really tight when Adam jumps, but pulls back after a few seconds—just—just in case maybe that wasn’t what Adam wanted after all, and he licks his lips as he stares down at their hands, shyly.

“So did I,” he says, when the silence in the room gets too heavy.

When Adam doesn’t answer immediately, Kris looks up at him, and finds Adam looking down at him, like he’s trying to figure out how his world just turned upside-down. Kris looks at the clock on top of the TV and says, “My mom will be here in a few minutes.”

Adam jerks backwards, ripping his hands out of Kris’ grip, before standing up. “Right,” he says. “I’ll go.”

“You don’t have to,” Kris says, and he cringes at how desperate it sounds. “I just meant—out here—we could go to my room?”

“And do _what_ , Kristopher?” Adam says, and it’s almost hysterical. Kris wants to yell back. He stays still on the couch though, and listens to Adam walk to the door and try to put on those boots. 

“Adam?” he says, and there must be something in his voice, because Adam stops and looks back at him.

He’s not really asking Adam to stay right now, when he says, “ _Please,_ ”, his voice too small and broken. He’s not asking for Adam to stay in the apartment with him, but he doesn’t bother to fix Adam’s assumption when he kicks back off the one boot he’s managed to get on and walks back over to the couch. Kris isn’t even sure how he goes from being too sick to go to school to being pushed down into a couch with one-hundred and forty pounds of _Adam_ on top of him, but he is sure that he really, really likes the change.

&

It was kind of anti-climatic in the end, when Kris’ mother walks in and yells and covers her eyes, “Kris! Not in the _living room_!” (They all sit down awkwardly at the dinner table when she insists Adam stay for meatloaf, but then Adam kisses Kris good-bye, and it’s this really deep kiss and Adam has Kris pushed against the wall of the hallway, and his lips are just, like, biting at Kris’ like they never ever want to stop, and that definitely more than makes up for any of the weird questions Kris’ mom asks after that, and almost makes up for the way his mom stares at her debit card for half-an-hour after that before putting it back in her purse and going to bed too early.) 

&

Adam is sitting on the bike rack in front of the school when Kris gets there the next day, and Kris grins as he says, “What, are you waiting for me now?”

Adam shrugs, “I can, can’t I?”

“If you must,” Kris says, secretly happy at seeing Adam this early. They’ve been seeing each other every day after school for months now, and occasionally in-between classes, but neither of them ever thought to meet up before school even started. When Kris finishes tying his bike up, he turns and shuffles his feet, not sure if he’s supposed to—walk with Adam, with comfortable guy code space between them, or maybe hold his hand (which would be weird, actually, Kris thinks). But what he really wants to know is if there are hello kisses involved in guy-to-guy relationships, and if there are, where is his.

Before he can ask though, Danny and Anoop are both walking over, Adam looks like he’s planning on leaving, so Kris reaches out and grabs his hand anyway, and says, “ _Stay_ , Adam.”

“Really?” Adam asks, and he sounds unsure even though he’s gripping Kris’ hand back tightly.

Kris grins, “Yeah, really,” and thinks _screw the guy code_ before pulling Adam in for a kiss.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you liked reading!
> 
> Also, look at the _absolutely amazing_ art that did for _rememberingALLY_ right [here](http://norinoricat.livejournal.com/79725.html). //FLAILS OVER// HOW AMAZING IS THAT? JESUS CHRIST. ♥ I really love her, you have no idea how fantastic she is and has been! Give her lots of love, guys! <333


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